Microsoft’s Quantum team is excited to announce the Q# Coding Contest – Winter 2019! In this contest you can put your quantum programming skills to the test, solving quantum computing tasks in Q#. Winners will receive a Microsoft Quantum T-shirt!

Quantum computing is a radically different computing paradigm compared to classical computing. Indeed, it is so different that some tasks that are believed to be classically intractable (such as factoring integers or simulating physical systems) can be performed efficiently on a quantum computer. In 2017 Microsoft introduced the Quantum Development Kit which includes the Q# programming language. Q# can be used with Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code or the command line, on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

In summer of 2018 we hosted the first quantum programming contest, which included problems on introductory topics in quantum computing: superposition, measurement, quantum oracles and simple algorithms. This contest will offer harder problems on some of these topics as well as introduce some new topics.

Codeforces Round #540 (Div. 3) will start at Feb/19/2019 17:35 (Moscow time). You will be offered 6 or 7 problems with expected difficulties to compose an interesting competition for participants with ratings up to 1600. Probably, participants from the first division will not be at all interested by this problems. And for 1600-1899 the problems will be too easy. However, all of you who wish to take part and have rating 1600 or higher, can register for the round unofficially.

The round will be hosted by rules of educational rounds (extended ACM-ICPC). Thus, during the round, solutions will be judged on preliminary tests, and after the round it will be a 12-hour phase of open hacks. I tried to make strong tests — just like you will be upset if many solutions fail after the contest is over.

You will be given 6 or 7 (or 8) problems and 2 hours to solve them.

Note that the penalty for the wrong submission in this round (and the following Div. 3 rounds) is 10 minutes.

Remember that only the trusted participants of the third division will be included in the official standings table. As it is written by link, this is a compulsory measure for combating unsporting behavior. To qualify as a trusted participants of the third division, you must:

take part in at least two rated rounds (and solve at least one problem in each of them),

do not have a point of 1900 or higher in the rating.

Regardless of whether you are a trusted participant of the third division or not, if your rating is less than 1600, then the round will be rated for you.

Thanks to MikeMirzayanov for the platform, help with ideas for problems and for coordination of my work. Thanks to my good friends Mikhail PikMike Piklyaev, Maksim Ne0n25 Mescheryakov and Ivan BledDest Androsov for help in round preparation and testing the round.

Good luck!

I also would like to say that participants who will submit wrong solutions on purpose and hack them afterwards (example) will not be shown in the hacking leaders table.

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UPD: Due to the problems being really interesting the round will last 2 hours 15 minutes.

This round will be rated for the participants with rating lower than 2100. It will be held on extented ICPC rules. The penalty for each incorrect submission until the submission with a full solution is 10 minutes. After the end of the contest you will have 12 hours to hack any solution you want. You will have access to copy any solution and test it locally.

Harbour.Space Barcelona is proud to announce a collaboration with one of our industrial partners to offer a fully funded scholarship for our one year Master’s in Data Science Programme at HSU Barcelona.

We don’t play by the rules. We bring practicing professionals, not only academic teachers, who come teach for intense, 3 week modules. HSU students are encouraged to experiment, fail, and try again, until they succeed.

We are your home. Harbour.Space is a community of over 40 nationalities, and we're still growing.

We provide an experience. Harbour.Space University is located in Barcelona, one of the most vibrant cities of our time.

If you are interested in the scholarship, fill out the form below and we will contact you about the next steps.

We are honored to invite you to Codeforces Round #538 (Div. 2), which will take place at Feb/10/2019 17:05 (Moscow time). The round will be rated for all Division 2 participants (with rating less than 2100). Still, we warmly welcome Division 1 participants to join us out of competition.

You will be given 6 problems to solve in 2 hours. The round's problems were initially prepared by Duy-Bach Akikaze Le, Xuan-Tung neko_nyaa Nguyen and Xuan-Quang xuanquang1999 D. Nguyen.

There will be an interactive problem in this round. Learn more about interactive problems here.

This is our first attempt in making a Codeforces round, so suggestions are much welcome to help us improve ourselves. ;)

We also want to thanks many friends for making this round possible:

Dmitry _kun_ Sayutin for coordinating the round, providing a neat idea on one problem and some Russian translations.

Andrew GreenGrape Rayskiy for various suggestions on the problems, some other Russian translations, and most importantly, peacefully submitted himself to be quarantined from pretests. ;)

February 2019 is already on the calendar, which means that I was late with the report for 2018. Better late than never! Let's remember last year.

In 2018, _kun_, 300iq and arsijo joined the team of coordinators. The work of the coordinators is headed (and is the coordinator of the coordinators) KAN. I really hope that a more measured schedule of preparing rounds by a large team of coordinators will give a better insight into the contests. The main innovations in the platform are implemented by me and the developers kuviman, fcspartakm, MaximShipko. Great work on the organization of events and prizes mailing was done by gKseni.

Special thanks to the writers of the problems and testers. It is your content that charges the community with life and unites all of us. Thank you for the problems!

And now let's summarize the 2018th year.

Partner Events

We are pleased to hold programming competitions with companies or for companies. I'm sure this is a great way to support the community of young programmers and hire talented candidates. Here is a list of our main partners this year:

Telegram and personally Pavel Durov is supporting Codeforces activities for many years, every regular round is held with their help, thank you!

VK, VK Cup — team competition for young Russian-speaking programmers with a series of elimination rounds and finals in St. Petersburg